Workout of the Day

Jan 08

Recklessly Responsible

Have you ever walked into a public restroom to find paper towels overflowing from the trash bins and spilling out all over the floor?

In such cases, I can’t help but consider how simple it would be to prevent the problem from ever happening. All it would take is a restroom patron compressing the pile in the trash bin, even just a bit, every time it looked close to the brink.

But this rarely happens. Instead, we see an overflowing stack of paper towels and think “what a mess -- someone should really take care of this” as we absentmindedly toss our own paper towel onto the overflowing heep or straight to the floor and make the problem worse.

We have a principle at CrossFit No Boundaries that ownership -- something we value highly -- means taking responsibility regardless of fault. We could even call this a direct encouragement of reckless responsibility. What this means is that there is no such thing as turning a blind eye or deflecting responsibility because it’s someone else’s fault or problem.

It is in no way the fault of patron #212 of the public restroom that none of the 211 patrons before her thought to stuff their paper towel mess, but patron #212 has the responsibility (opportunity) to make that positive change as much as anyone else.

This principle applies to bathrooms, but it applies to just about everything else, too. Maybe it’s not your fault that someone didn’t put away their shopping cart, or that you work long hours and sit in traffic, or that the rest of your family’s habits don’t align with your desire to eat healthy and exercise; but what if you took ownership and pretended that it was? What if you were recklessly responsible? For one, I think we’d have a lot more tidy public restrooms.